


Name

by holyfant



Category: Poets RPF
Genre: Asphyxiation, Bloodplay, Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-16
Updated: 2009-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:57:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no need for first names in this life of theirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Name

There is no need for first names in this life of theirs. Rimbaud only barely remembers his own first name – it is Arthur, Arthur, with all its visions of green lands and surviving myths, his mother would tell him afterwards, rocking him like a child – and while he knows Verlaine’s is Paul, there is nothing about Verlaine that says Paul. “Paul” is small white houses and dark-rocked cliffs, with a cosiness that softens the rooftop where the gulls nest and a woman waiting inside, watching the seas. “Verlaine” is night, the glittering of teeth, the swirling greenness of the absinthe gathering at the corners of his mouth and the dip of a musky mattress, absinthe in between their faces as they touch and burn and rip each other open. Verlaine isn’t Paul and Rimbaud isn’t Arthur – where Arthur loved his wife and clear, honest battles, Rimbaud sucks Verlaine’s cock and kills him with his words, in unnoticed ways that fade in the daylight.

In the daylight, Verlaine drinks. The absinthe he buys is poison, Rimbaud knows it, but he knows that it isn’t just the only kind Verlaine can afford, it is the kind Verlaine needs. Verlaine writes in the stupor, the death-like trance; he sees worlds and he sees himself, stripped bare of his needs and his sins, he sees his face in the pattern of the city streets. Rimbaud envies him for this. As Verlaine writes, a little bit of drool dripping from the right corner of his mouth and his pen scratching into the wood of his desk – there is no paper, too expensive – Rimbaud hits him hard, open-handed, giving up his palms to Verlaine, giving himself as he scratches and cuts with sharp nails until those eyes are on him, burning green and death. Verlaine hits him back, and soon Rimbaud is deep into Verlaine’s mouth, sharing the poison, sharing the dream as Verlaine sucks his cock sloppily, drunkenly and complains afterwards about the come stinging in his eye. Sometimes, at night, Rimbaud imagines his come is the antidote that saves Verlaine from absinthe death, and it makes him feel strangely nauseous.

Sometimes he’s not sure what the fuck he’s even doing here. He remembers the first letter he wrote to Verlaine – nothing but a couple of poems and a signature, a last desperate cry as every other poet in the country had given him nothing but silence – and the first reply, which told him clearly to just come, and included a one-way ticket to Paris. He met Verlaine under dark, threatening clouds. There was storm coming. Verlaine touched his thumb to Rimbaud’s forehead as way of greeting and later, as Verlaine slid his cock harshly, burningly into his arse, pounding, drawing blood and – as Rimbaud imagined in his feverish post-orgasmic stupor – passing on death and talent and words and disease, the thunder broke above them as if the sky ripped at the seams. Afterwards he thought of Verlaine’s wife, for a minute, until Verlaine kissed him again. Even now, in London, amongst eternal mists and rain, Verlaine likes to fuck during storms. Rimbaud feels trapped in the feverish heat of storm and Verlaine’s body, and sees flashes of insight fading out of sight as quick as they came, as Verlaine does that thing with his fingernails to his cock that’s often made him bleed and always makes him come. It’s that suffocation that scares him and that yet makes him stay, makes him fall into their shabby smelly bed, full of come stains and blood, time and time again. He likes it when Verlaine pushes into his throat until he can’t breathe and comes, comes, comes until he sees nothing but red. In the clear moments, before Verlaine wakes and shares his drugs, his poisons, in the pearly London morning that presses into his face like a breath of new life, he thinks of running away. He can’t breathe here, in this stench, this dark life – but then there is Verlaine, with his white throat that throbs in his sleep, and his strong hands and the words he can speak. There are the words Rimbaud can speak. Sometimes they sit closely together, both writing, even though there is sometimes only one poem. There’s no need for absinthe in those moments, and for those moments Rimbaud stays.

They both know what the dreary streets of London mean for the both of them. They are so entwined with the city, the both of them, just like they are entwined with each other, like vines, and they can only mirror each other because that’s who they _are_ , that what they write, that’s all they think of. The city is grey and rainy and one morning Rimbaud has trouble getting Verlaine to wake, and thinks: he’s dead! The one clear, lucid moment of utter happiness scares him so much he runs, away to the dewy docks, the filthy rotting quarters of London, where he finds breath (and finds that it stinks as much as their bed). He returns and Verlaine is awake. Verlaine says: “I dreamt with my eyes open and it was you I saw.” Rimbaud thinks of words and how they say nothing, nothing in this case, and falls into the bed, meeting the stink of Verlaine in the morning. His lover is sweating death.

They don’t ever make love, but this time it is close – as close as Rimbaud’s love of suffocation, Verlaine’s need for blood can bring them. Rimbaud licks at the throbbing white throat and tastes the absinthe, the drugs, the unnamed filthy pleasures of last night. Verlaine scratches at him – he hates tongues, hates their intimacy – and hisses like a cat. “Just fuck me,” Rimbaud snaps, feeling the sweat and death of Verlaine in his mouth, feeling his cock throb already. Verlaine reaches into his trousers and squeezes until Rimbaud feels tears gathering behind his eyelids, and the lack of air burning his lungs. The trousers are quickly discarded, and there is no delay because Verlaine – as Rimbaud knows – gets off on hangovers, and is still drunk enough to not really care about softness or care. Already Verlaine’s cock is there, thrumming with not-yet-digested absinthe and more, more than that, more that is dark and leaves eternal marks. Rimbaud’s arse feels as if it’s being ripped apart, which is quite possible; there’s the warm rush of blood, anyway, and in it there’s the hot rush of pleasure and Verlaine fucks and Rimbaud writes poems in his mind. There is blood but it is still the closest they come to making love: Verlaine puts his hands on Rimbaud’s shoulders, as he’s relentlessly pounding into him, and gently trails them down over his back – a soft, tender, ticklish motion that harshly disturbs the raw pleasure of blood and cock. Rimbaud shivers as the hands find his hair and bury themselves in it, softly touching his scalp. It’s too much, it’s not enough – and he’s coming already, more from those fingertips on his head than from the cock filling his arse.

They’re lying on their bed, and there is a hesitant urge in Rimbaud’s brain to roll over and bury his face in Verlaine’s chest. He wants to, but instead his mouth does what it always does and makes some scathing remark, driving into Verlaine with words as Verlaine just drove into him with cock. There’s imaginary blood. This time, it may have been too much; there’s sorry on his lips as he sees Verlaine’s veins change colour, as he sees the hands reach for the gun.

His mother says to him as he comes home, his heart hurting with the pain of a thousand shot wounds: your name is Arthur, and you’re clean as a green plain.

He knows it isn’t true, but endures her hug anyway.


End file.
